By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
The NBA season starts today, and in less than a year this might also be a fact for NBA Europe.
In his customary meeting with the international press, NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum confirmed the timeline for a 2027 start of the new league in Europe, which will be a joint project by the NBA and FIBA.
“We’re in the process of finalizing agreements and will launch franchises soon”, he said, explaining that there’s no exact timeline and the point is for the project to be done the right way: “This is a historic moment; we have to do it right”.
The NBA Europe is expected to be a 16-team league with 12 permanent franchises and four that will qualify via the Basketball Champions League and also via their domestic leagues after an end-of-the-season qualifying tournament.
The first such tournament is expected to be held at the end of June 2027, with no other details being official yet, other than it’s expected to include the two semifinalists of the Basketball Champions League and the teams that finished in the top spots from the highest-ranked domestic European leagues.
“We are reimagining European basketball, giving everyone the opportunity based on merit”, Tatum added.
While Tatum didn’t provide a specific timeline for the announcements of franchises of the new league, or any update on the ongoing talks with the EuroLeague, he was asked how the recently announced EuroLeague 10-year plan and projected €3.4B distribution to participating teams may affect the NBA and FIBA plans.
The NBA and FIBA are ready to proceed with their plans; no mention was made of a possible deal with the EuroLeague, and on the contrary, according to Tatum, NBA Europe teams will be profitable by the third year of the league, while the league financial projections are triple compared to the EuroLeague’s plan estimates.
As he explained: “The EuroLeague’s ten-year business plan does not change our plans. I can tell you that our model will offer clubs a much quicker path to profitability. I’ve read some reports about EuroLeague teams that aren’t financially stable today: according to our projections, a team with a permanent spot in our league will, on average, achieve profitability by its Year 3. I’ve also seen the figures the EuroLeague intends to invest or redistribute to its clubs. Our projections indicate that we will triple those estimates, with distributions over ten years totaling billions and tens of billions of dollars, intended to flow back to the clubs and make them financially stable”.
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